Contrary to what was implied, the reverse mortgage industry is very interested in maintaining agressive consumer safeguards, in fully disclosing fees, and making sure every borrower understands his rights and responsibilities.

You know, I recall hearing the same line of BS regarding the refi and subprime mortgage market 4-5 years ago, when folks started warning people about what a cesspit that was turning into. We can now see how that all turned out.

The idea that the industry will somehow regulate itself is a libertarian fantasy, right up there with perpetual motion machines. The government needs to apply the boot of regulation firmly to the mortgage industry's neck, and it needs to do so now, before that industry causes any more economic damage.

The problem is not my reading comprehension but your understanding of terms.

O RLY?

A 20 year annuity does not lock your money up for 20 years, it is a PAYOUT over 20 years with principle and interest.

An annuity most certainly can lock up your money for 20 years before it begins to pay out a dime, depending on how its structured. See the SEC's own page on annuities at http://www.sec.gov/answers/annuity.htm and the pages it links to. There's an accumulation phase and a payout phase, unless you have an immediate annuity, in which case the payout begins as soon as you purchase the annuity.

This is not rocket science. I'm not a financial services professional, and even I knew this.

Again, no annuity I have ever read about, sold, or heard of ties the owner's money up against their will once they reach 62 years old

Well, welcome to the brave new world of libertarian America, where all sorts of shady new financial services products have been cooked up to bilk anyone who ever worked for a living or saved a dime out of their hard earned cash.

There's no fixed age limit on an annuity. There's a 10% Federal tax penalty if you withdraw from a retirement annuity prior to age 59 and a half.

and no insurance company marketing a product designed to do that wold get their prospectus by the SEC.

Assuming for a moment the Bush SEC would stop the criminals in our financial services industry from grinding up live babies and selling them as cat food, let alone impose regulations which would protect grandma's life savings, the SEC doesn't even regulate all annuities - only the variable rate annuities and some indexed annuities.

I'm not sure who regulates the fixed rate annuities. It's probably the same clowns who regulated all of the insurance companies - you know, the companies which still haven't paid the claims made against them related to hurricane Katrina . . .

Say whatever you want about her music, but she's essentially acting as the Marlboro Man for hard drug abuse.

Hardly. Her drug use is wrecking her career, her voice and her performances. If anything she's today's poster child for why drugs are dangerous and why drug abuse is no laughing matter.

Her songs occasionally mention her drug use, and when they do so they handle it honestly - nothing more, nothing less. "I didn't get a lot in class," Winehouse moans in "Rehab", "but I know it don't come in a shotglass." That one lyric is worth 10,000 inane "Just Say No" PSA's, and stands in sharp contrast to the product shoveled at us over Clear Channel radio stations by music moguls over the past 20 years or so (Clive Davis and "Crack is whack" Whitney, anyone?).